Fortress
(1986)
Australian Classics heads back to the 80s for
another classic Aussie thriller written by
Everett de Roche.
Fortress is a white knuckle thriller starring
Rachel Ward as a school teacher in a remote town whose school is
invaded by a group of men in creepy masks who are on the run from a
crime. The crims take the school teacher and her class of young
children of varying age as hostages and drive them out to a cave to
keep them for later use. That's the crims first mistake. They have
badly underestimated their hostages and their own knowledge of the
outback. From then on the crims try to get the hostages back under
control while the hostages try to get home using their local
knowledge to their advantage.
Fortress is a superb little thriller that
seems to be sadly lost in Australia (I had to get the DVD from the
US as it look unlikely to get a release here anytime soon, or at
all...). There is surprising tension and brutality throughout and
the kids using their skills to capture and kill their captors is
quite something. Let's face it, Everett de Roche always writes
enjoyable thrillers with hardly a failure to his name. And those
masks the crims wear are something else altogether. Where the hell
did they come from?
Rachel Ward looks pretty damn good in this
film, but then that's a given as she looked amazing during the 80s.
Rachel Ward film clip
collages below
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